12.31.2012

12 New Year’s Resolutions for Happier Families

By KJ DELL'ANTONIAAs I wrote around this time a year ago,
I love making New Year’s resolutions. For me, it’s a moment to take
stock of where I am, and where I want to be, and of all the things I’ve
said I hoped to do and have or haven’t done — and why. The resolutions I
fail at are always the ones I didn’t really want to keep.
This
year, for the first time, I hope to gather my family and persuade them
to talk about what we did and didn’t do well as a family this year, and
to make a family resolution: Who do we want to be together in 2013? (My
husband will say that he wants us to be a family that does not make New
Year’s resolutions.)
In that spirit, I asked authors I admire to offer one single resolution to help shape a happier family life in the year ahead.Brené Brown,
author of “Daring Greatly and The Gifts of Imperfection”: One intention
our family is setting for 2013 is to make more art. It doesn’t matter
if it’s more photography, more painting, experimenting in the kitchen,
or building the LEGO Death Star (which is our family project right now).
I want to create together. It keeps us connected and spiritually
grounded.
Andrew and Caitlin Friedman, authors of “Family, Inc.:
Take a meeting with your partner or family. Spending just 30 minutes a
week on our to-do list, schedule and brainstorming bigger decisions
really helped us take control of the chaos that is working parenthood.
Po Bronson, co-author of “NurtureShock” and the forthcoming “Top Dog”
(January 2013): Our resolution in our family is pretty simple: argue
less, talk more. Even though in “NurtureShock” we wrote that arguing is
the opposite of lying, and it is, there’s a lot of arguing that’s just
about arguing, and we hope for less of it.
Ashley Merryman, co-author of “NurtureShock” and the forthcoming “Top Dog”
(January 2013): This year, I want to sit less. You can read that as
“need to exercise” – true enough – but sitting also means I’m spending
too much time online, watching too much TV, and so on. Instead, I want
to do more meaningful things with people I care about.Bruce Feiler,
“This Life” columnist for Sunday Styles and author of “Walking the
Bible”, “Abraham” and “The Secrets of Happy Families” (coming in
February): Bribe more creatively (fewer direct rewards for good
behavior; more unanticipated praise and surprise adventures). Celebrate
more fully (worry less about bad moments; make more of the good). Play
more often.
Madeline Levine, author of “Teach Your Children Well”: I resolve to lead with my ears and not my mouth. I’ve yet to meet a child who feels like they’ve been listened to too much.
Asha Dornfest, founder of Parent Hacks and co-author of “Minimalist Parenting: Enjoy Modern Family Life More by Doing Less”:
Embrace the idea of course correction. When faced with a parenting
decision, briefly survey your options then make the best choice you can,
knowing you can recalculate your route to the destination as the
situation — and your family — changes.
Christine Koh, founder of Boston Mamas and co-author of “Minimalist Parenting: Enjoy Modern Family Life More by Doing Less”:
Strive for a less frantic family calendar in 2013 by finding your
“Goldilocks level of busy.” Review the last couple of months of your
family calendar and identify how many events or activities made your
weeks feel too crazy, too slow or just right. Shoot for the “just right”
number each week.Gretchen Rubin, author of “The Happiness Project” and “Happier at Home”:
It’s easy to fall into the bad habit of barely looking up from games,
homework, books or devices when family members come and go. For that
reason, in my family, we made a group resolution to “give warm greetings
and farewells.” This habit is surprisingly easy to acquire — it doesn’t
take any extra time, energy or money — and it makes a real difference
to the atmosphere of home.Rivka Caroline, author of “From Frazzled to Focused” (@SoBeOrganized):
Keep adding to your “to-don’t” list. As frustrating as it is, there
just isn’t time for everything. Every “to-don’t” makes room for a
“to-do.”
Laura Vanderkam, author of “What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend”:
Think about how you want to spend your downtime. Weekends, evenings and
vacations can be opportunities for adventure, but we often lose them in
front of the TV because we fail to plan. In 2013, make a bucket list of
the fun you want to have as a family — then get those ideas on the
calendar.
Michelle Cove, author of “I Love Mondays, and Other Confessions from Devoted Working Moms”:
The next time you’re about to apologize to anyone — children,
colleagues — ask yourself if you’ve really done anything wrong. Too
often, we moms apologize by default.

12.27.2012

Surprised by skid row

Down and out, but not without dignity and humanity..

A homeless man is seen
walking by a construction project in Los Angeles where 102 prefabricated
housing units are being built.
(Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images / December 11, 2012)

By Jeff Dietrich

December 25, 2012

Inside the grubby brown paper lunch bag was a red leather Gucci
wallet that contained a checkbook, credit cards, a $50 check to a
church, a St. Joseph holy card and a $2,500 payroll check. "I thought
someone might need this to make their mortgage payment," Ernie said as
he handed me the bag with its unlikely contents. The irony is that Ernie
is a homeless man who sleeps on the streets of skid row and he was
worried about the checkbook owners, who had a house in fashionable La
Cañada.
"I don't have any money to call these people," Ernie told me. "Could
you take care of it for me, Jeff?" Ernie is a morning regular at the
Catholic Worker in downtown Los Angeles near the county welfare office. Every day, we serve coffee, eggs, oatmeal, fruit and day-old Starbucks pastries to a line of people that has grown from 40 to more than 100 in the last year.
"I found the wallet in a dumpster at the corner of Broadway and
Alpine in Chinatown. I check all the dumpsters for aluminum cans and
glass, even Starbucks paper cups," he said as he handed me a receipt
from the recycling center for $6.25. "I can get a burrito with that."
I asked one of my co-workers
to use her cellphone to call the wallet's owner. The grateful woman
asked to speak to Ernie, who told her: "You're welcome, it's no problem.
My grandmother taught me that it was wrong to steal."
Ernie later told me he had attended Immaculate Conception grammar
school and Cathedral High School and had had a scholarship to USC, but
the money ran out after two years. He had started working at 8 years
old, shining shoes on Broadway with his brother. His last job was as a
van pool driver for the city of Los Angeles.
But four years ago, he said, "I got laid off and I've been living on
the streets since then. But I haven't gone loony. I try to stay clean,
and I try to stay busy. I go to the library and I recycle. It's not like
the '70s and the '80s when you could just go out and get a job. Now
they don't even want to see you. You have to apply online and they just
look at your job history. It's not easy. When you are over 50, there's
not much out there, but I keep trying."
A few hours later, the wallet's owner came to the Catholic Worker
house, full of gratitude. She told us she must have lost her wallet when
eating lunch at her favorite coffee shop in Pasadena. A man had bumped
against the back of her chair, she said, but she "didn't think anything
of it at the time." It wasn't until she was home that she noticed the
wallet missing from her purse.
She had immediately gone to the bank to close her account. When she
described her loss to a bank teller, she mentioned the St. Joseph holy
card. The teller told her not to worry, that St. Joseph would return her
wallet to her.
"Well, I went ahead and closed the accounts and stopped payment on
the checks because I certainly did not expect that to happen," the woman
said.
As she was leaving our facility, she gave a staffer an envelope
containing $50 and a St. Joseph holy card. "This is for Ernie," she
said.
It is true that many people on skid row are drug addicts, many are
mentally unstable and, yes, some are even petty criminals who would have
known how to put the contents of that wallet to their own advantage. It
is also true that many of them are just simply poor and unemployed,
victims of a broken, fast-changing world economy that seems bent on
rewarding the wealthy to the detriment of the poor and the common good.
But there are also many such as Ernie who have maintained their
dignity, their humanity, their sanity and their moral character despite
their arduous circumstances.
As the gap between the rich and the poor widens, so too does the gap
between the reality of the poor and our conception of the poor. The
further apart we grow, the greater is our tendency to stereotype and
demonize the poor as lazy and as addicts and criminals, and to dismiss
our mutual humanity and thus our inherent responsibility to the least of
our brothers and sisters. Ernie narrowed the gap — if only for a moment
— between the rich and the poor, between La Cañada and skid row.
In the beginning of the Bible, God asked Cain the whereabouts of the
brother he had just murdered. Cain's response was, "Am I my brother's
keeper?" This Christmas, as we celebrate our Savior born a homeless
refugee in a makeshift stable, we might ask ourselves that same
question.Jeff Dietrich is a member of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker. His
most recent book is "Broken and Shared: Food, Dignity and the Poor on
Los Angeles' Skid Row."

12.25.2012

So no one wrote in, horrified like me, that the mom of a minor
wanted to request that her daughter not sit next to a man?What a paranoid "every male is a pervert" society.I was recently in the San Francisco airport when a small child, about
4 years old, ran through the terminal crying, "Mommy, mommy, mommy."In her confusion, she ran up to a man entering the restroom. I was
getting to her, as were other airport workers, when the man stooped down
and comforted her. He redirected her and went to great lengths to get
her settled and connected to Mommy. It was a wonderful yet reasonable
thing to see.Christina NeumeyerLicensed Marriage and Family TherapistCarlsbadhttp://www.latimes.com/travel/

Christmas can be tricky, especially when Mum and Dad no longer live together and both have new families. Where do the "old" children
fit in, and how do you pick out the fractured anger and anxiety of the
ghosts of Christmas past? There are bound to be winners and losers,
enemies and friends.
My friend Peter invited me to dinner with his
partner of 14 years, Jane, and their two young children, Harriet and
Olivia. I fell in love with Jane and we had a son, Magnus. Peter met
Anne and they had a son, Ezra. So this love triangle really involves
three families: the original family
of Peter, Jane, Harriet and Olivia, the first new family of Jane, me
and Magnus, and the second new family of Peter, Anne and Ezra.
How
do you crack the problem of Christmas when the kids from the original
family want Mum and Dad to be together on the big day? They yearn to
have some of the old security and normality back in their lives, if only
briefly, by bringing their parents together again. They have
been satellite kids for too long, living on the edge. Now they want to
be centre stage.
Peter and Anne decided to invite the girls as
well as Jane, Magnus and me to a Christmas house party at Anne's place,
an old converted Oddfellows Hall in Norfolk. I arrived for a week's
visit with an armful of presents and even more questions – "What the
hell am I doing here?" "How do I get out of this?" "Who's going to get
hurt?" "Why didn't we twig this could be a big, deep disaster?"
I had encountered the same questions before when I erected a whacking great shark's tail crashing through the roof tiles of my house in Oxford
without the benefit of planning permission. The battle to keep it there
raged for six years, from the council to the courts to the cabinet, and
the shark is still there. In contrast to that, this would be a doddle.
By now, we had all settled into new relationships,
but these had strains. My son Magnus was two and Peter's partner, Anne,
was pregnant with Ezra. There were also the stains from the old
relationships that no one could erase. Peter had been jilted by Jane and
still had a smouldering, semi-threatening side to his smiles, or did
he? I had no idea how deep the cracks went. But Harriet, 12, and Olivia,
nine, were delighted, if not manic. They had what they wanted: Mum and
Dad together for Christmas. They had got their wish, but at what price?
This
kind of Christmas shouldn't have worked. Peter and Anne are Jewish and,
on their terms, Christmas should be a non-starter. Jane was the
"wayward wife" who had rejected Peter. I was the intruder who had broken
up a family. Harriet and Olivia were grieving for a lost father and
Magnus, in the middle of the "terrible twos", was, at best, difficult.
We were all in various states of suspicion and disturbance.
It was
almost a cruel experiment to throw us all together when the mixture
might be explosive; and over the past 25 years it has bubbled up at
times with odd resentments, bossy parents, and sibling squabbles, but
strangely this unlikely alliance has worked and the legacy is that we
have grown from three separate family groups into one. Maybe it has
happened because we are all survivors and knew we needed each other to
"make it", as we all had a stake in the outcome. There was no "them or
us" attitude, it was just "us".
On a practical level, we decided
to ditch family pressures and share responsibilities. Instead of one
woman doing all the cooking, there is little pressure these days because
what started with four adults sharing the stove has now turned into
four women and four men doing the cooking. It is very laid back. One
year we didn't get around to Christmas lunch until 2am on Boxing Day. It
is a time to relax and take off old masks or put on new, fun ones.
Walking
is also a way of bonding. We've rambled over most paths along the north
Norfolk coast and watched flocks of geese turn the orange evening sky
purple as they come in to land at Holkham beach. Under the squawking and
honking sounds, we have gossiped and whispered about disappointments,
hopes and betrayals, mostly outside the extended family, but sometimes
inside it. We have found a way of holding each other together. We
haven't forgotten our own, sometimes bitter, back stories, but we just
don't let them get in the way any more.
Fear can also bring people
together. Oddfellows Hall is on the edge of the forest at Holkham Hall
and from the start we recycled dead wood from the forest to our
fireplace, very old, lichen-encrusted, gnarled limbs only, of course. We
have all done it. One night, Anne and Jane and the girls went out with
torches to gather firewood. A gamekeeper with a gruff northern accent
and a dog leaped out and told them: "Leave and don't come back." It was
very menacing. Fortunately, they had almost filled the car boot with
firewood and drove off, but the experience helped the group to hug each
other around the fire ... and laugh later.
This was in
contrast to all those dark nights when we had walked in the snow through
the tall trees of Holkham forest looking for owls, never worrying about
our safety. After this we did, but that didn't deter us.
Over the
years, our group has expanded to include a granny, a sister, cousins
and assorted friends and lovers, even a parrot called Rembrandt. And the
length of Christmas, at least ours, is elastic and runs for two weeks
some years.
We've also widened the celebrations where we all get
together to include birthdays, Mother's Day and, more controversially,
Father's Day, when all four kids recently decided to ambush the two
fathers and hold a contest to find out which father knew more about all
four children. They then turned the tables, acted as judges, took a vote
and selected the "better father". It was agonising to find out how
little you know about your kids; and I say "your kids" because I feel
like a father to all four of them, and so does Peter.
Over the
years, Christmas has changed for us. In the early days, the table was
always lit by a beautiful silver candelabra brought by Anne's Jewish
grandparents when they fled from Russia on foot and carried it over the
Carpathian mountains. When she started to explore more precisely her
Jewishness and roots, it disappeared – not exactly appropriate for
Christmas.
In the age of the internet, the presents have changed
from statements to tweets. In the beginning, we wanted to reassure each
other and bought big presents. Now the gifts are mostly culled over the
year from Oxfam shops, jumble sales and car boots, or they are handmade.
Jane is a potter, and each of us by now has almost a full dinner set.
This
strange celebration of Christmas tends to end on New Year's Eve. We
light Chinese lanterns and send them into the sky. It's the closest
thing to a sacred moment, when we offer something to the air, watch it
bounce about tentatively and then take off, flying higher and higher.
It
somehow lifts the spirits, but we stand with shoulders hunched and well
wishes as this little light goes with the wind. We know it's delicate.
We don't know where it's going, but we all hope it won't come crashing
down in flames and disaster, although it could. Maybe that's the secret:
we know and yet we still go with it. Long may the delicacy be as robust
as it is.The Hunting of the Shark by Bill Heine is published by OxfordFolio, £14.99

12.23.2012

One year ago, Madonna Badger awoke to a house full of
choking smoke on Christmas morning. Her three young daughters, mother and
father all perished. Since that time, Madonna has experienced the most horrific
pain and trauma imaginable, as she describes, “blood coming from my eyes.”

I
recently watched her interviewed with great interest – as I have wondered about
her over the past year. It is mind-boggling to see how the psyche desperately
struggles to make sense of events (the brain must always balance and reconcile
itself, like a checkbook).

Miss
Badger talked powerfully and emotionally about wanting to die for months after
the incident. After several mental hospital stays, her emotional recovery
finally begins as she starts tovividly dream about her children.

Miss
Badger’s loss meets the definition of “complicated grief,” a grief more
challenging to grapple with than typical bereavement, for these reasons: she
witnessed the trauma, she was the sole survivor, and she was nearby yet unable
to rescue her five family members. The evidence leading to a cause of fire was
destroyed when the city demolished the remains of her burnt home, against her
wishes; she’ll never really “know why or how it happened.” Her total belongings,
photos, toys, and possessions - everything she knew and loved - were also taken in the fire. The final blow: her
boyfriend may have inadvertently emptied hot ash into the garbage,
causing the fire.

If
a person is unable to reconcile themselves with such a tragedy, never finding
resolution or acceptance of an event (“this really happened and nothing can
change that fact”), no matter how dramatic in scale, then the psyche lives in constant
distress between “what I wish was” and “what is.” Once the acceptance
occurs and the brain has allowed two frayed ends to meet, post-trauma growth
happens. This is when you’ll hear something like, “We never knew we could be so
close,” “It strengthened our faith,” or, “He lived life to its fullest.” This
indicates post-traumatic growth, a psychic shift of acceptance.

Watch
her powerful description here – be sure to click on the video portion at bottom
of NBC page.

12.13.2012

Learning from the best

Free, online no-credit college-level courses from some of the nation's most prestigious universities.

(Kirk McKoy, Los Angeles Times / December 9, 2012)

By Scott J. Wilson

December 9, 2012

The number of free
college-level courses offered online has surged this year, with some of
the nation's most prestigious universities getting involved. The classes
are open to anyone, and although you won't earn college credit, you
will get a chance to learn from professors and other experts at no
charge. Some key websites:
• Coursera.org: Thirty-three
universities, including Stanford, Caltech, Princeton and Duke, have
joined together to offer more than 200 courses. Among them are 21
classes in economics and finance, 13 in business and management, and 20
in artificial intelligence and robotics. Courses typically include video
instruction and weekly assignments, and may include a final exam.
• Edx.org: This site offers nine classes, mostly in computer science, from Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and UC Berkeley. Expect to spend 10 to 20 hours each week on courses
that run from six weeks to six months. Courses from the University of
Texas and Wellesley College are to be added next year.
• Udacity.com: This
site founded by Sebastian Thrun, the Stanford robotics professor who
helped build Google's driverless car, offers 16 classes, mostly in
computer science and mathematics. Instructors include professors from
the University of Virginia, Rutgers and Stanford, as well as experts
from Google.
• Oli.cmu.edu: Carnegie-Mellon University's Open
Learning Initiative, a private Pittsburgh university, offers 16 free
online courses, including French, anatomy, psychology, biology,
chemistry and statistics. The classes include practice activities,
self-assessments and graded exercises, and can be completed at your own
pace.
• Udemy.com: This site offers hundreds of courses,
including serious academic topics and lighter fare such as cake
decorating and Ice Fishing Tips & Techniques. Instructors include
college professors, business consultants, authors and self-described
experts. Some classes require payment, but you can view free classes
by using a filter on the Discover Courses page.scott.wilson@latimes.comcopyright 2012@latimes.com

12.07.2012

Two researchers in the field of social psychology have been
investigating the topic of self-control for some time now. Wilhelm Hofmann of
The University of Chicago and Malte Friese of University of Basel, Switzerland
are interested in how people handle desires in daily life. While past research
has shown that Mindfulness has implications for sustained attentional control
and stress reduction, Professors Hofmann and Friese are also interested in
learning about how Mindfulness may affect how we deal with desires that we
encounter on an everyday basis.

While the holidays can be a time for tremendous joy and
thankfulness, they also have the potential to be a time for thoughtful
choices about what we consume and what we do. How can we maintain our health
goals in the face of plentiful holiday meals? Which people should we make
time to see during this time, and how much time should we reserve for
ourselves? Just how many of those delicious holiday cookies our neighbor
baked us is too many?

Two researchers in the field of social psychology have been
investigating the topic of self-control for some time now. Wilhelm Hofmann of
The University of Chicago and Malte Friese of University of Basel,
Switzerland are interested in how people handle desires in daily life. While
past research has shown that Mindfulness has implications for sustained
attentional control and stress reduction, Professors Hofmann and Friese are
also interested in learning about how Mindfulness may affect how we deal with
desires that we encounter on an everyday basis.

Much of Professor Hofmann’s research uses short online surveys
to collect information from people at various times throughout the day.
Research participants receive a text message on their smartphone prompting
them to respond to a quick survey about what they’re doing at that moment.
This way, the study is better able to capture people’s experiences in real
time as opposed to traditional, retrospective accounts of what happened
throughout the day. These informative, time sensitive accounts give
researchers a rich picture of people’s daily experiences with goal-setting,
self-restraint, and other topics of interest.

Eligibility Requirements

·You must own a smartphone with a data plan for internet access
and an ability to receive SMS messages.